Thursday, November 02, 2006

All seeing eyes

UK residents are now subject to near-constant surveillance, says a report commissioned by the government authority charged with championing personal privacy. The report has recevied widespread coverage in the news, and deservedly so. Here's a quick list of some of the features of today's "surveillance society", as information commissioner Richard Thomas calls it.

Twenty per cent of the world's CCTV cameras (4.2 million) are in the UK.

The UK has the world's largest DNA database (3.6 million records) including samples from many innocent people.

Databases of personal data such as medical records are being built without the knowledge or consent of the data's owner.

I find this alarming. Directly or indirectly, successive UK governments have surrounded their citizens with surveillance technologies. While these can be beneficial, I think the UK has gone over the top. As the report points out, many of the resulting systems are unwieldy and error-prone, increasing the risk of data mixups that could have dire consequences for innocent people. The sheer scale of surveillance produces a population constantly presumed guilty.

Unfortunately, the report strays off the rails when it turns to the impact of future technology. In 2016 it predicts that remote-controlled UAVs will monitor the streets, while cameras in lampposts and walls follow our movements in 3D, and private security officers take DNA swabs from people in the street.

I've posted before about the poor returns on such speculation, and I don't think we'll see any of these predictions confirmed in 2016. I fear projecting future nightmares could even help politicians justify the current situation. Better to get real and tackle the bad dream of today's surveillance society. For anyone inclined to read the full 102-page report it's available here.

The next step: Through-the-wall-imaging-technique.The end of private life: Being observed in your own home, with pulsed microwave beams (radar).

?Millimeter wave technology is very promising for penetrating walls. These extremly short waves, 30 to 300 gigahertz, can be transmitted through a wall and echo off objects on the other side. These echoes are captured and through signal processing converted into useable images? (Alexander, J.B.: Winning the war, 2003, p. 52-53).?

So What??My grandad didn't want a bank account because he didn't want the teller to know how much money he had. All this fear about people having seen seen you walk down a street, go in a shop, buy something, go home again. Just a big SO WHAT??

Being microwavedIf one can see you in your home through walls with microwaves, you can also be attacked with microwave weapons. NewScientist has many articles about those directed energy weapons. Being microwaved in your living-room and bed, would you like that? Still, so what?

One "so what", Anonymous2, is that when the police want to view footage they can, but when the public want to view footage we can't.

And camera footage can be used to manipulate and blackmail people who haven't broken any law - for example to collect data on married individuals who are seeing a lover.

If cameras view public areas, there should at the least be public access. If all CCTV cameras had by law to be webcams, and therefore publicly searchable, we might think more carefully about what it means to have less and less privacy.

Especially since there is very little evidence it brings us less and less crime.

Doesn't this article make one appreciate the genius behind George Orwell's futuristic sci-fi masterpiece 1984, written in 1948, post WWII? The world then was awash in suspicion and fears of a lawless world where totalitarian regimes had the power to terrorize civilian populations. Doublespeak became the operative word . . . "freedom is slavery, ignorance is knowledge, & war is peace." Western society has learned to tremble at its own shadows. "Security" cameras give us peace of mind; government, big brother,is watching over us. Perhaps our fears have become the self-fulfilled prophecies of which Orwell's thriller attemtps to warn?

I think the real question about all this stuff is "is it cost effective?" and the answer is clearly "no".

Spending lots of money on CCTV and DNA databases is just not giving us law enforcement value for money. We could employ some more police with that money for a visible increase in safety.

We could spend the money on improved rehabilitation for offenders to prevent re-offending. Videoing me being stabbed is far less useful than having the mugger employed as a productive member of society to all concerned.

Regardless of how we all feel about being watched by "Big Brother" we can't stop the progression of technology. These "all seeing eyes" have their good uses and bad uses, just like everything else. What we need to do is learn how to protect ourselves from the crimnals who have access to this type of technonogy, because we won't be able to stop it.